burdensome
by sexkitn
Summary: hermione has become burdensome to harry and ron. kind of graphic, hence the rating.


Hermione was dying. She looked down at her freshly opened wrists and watched idly as the bright blood trickled down her semi cupped hands to land with a plop in the growing puddle of crimson on the floor under her. Hermione looked away from the surreal image and tried to focus on something else, to not dwell on what she had just done to herself. She had done it; she had no one to blame for her present state but herself. A single crystalline tear released itself from her eye and slowly descended along her face and dripped onto the floor. Hermione could feel the small droplet trailing down her face, it tickled her.

"There it goes, the one and only tear that will be shed for me, and its from me" Hermione reflected bitterly. 

Her vision was getting foggy. She could dimly make out the toilet stalls on her right and the vanities on her left. Unbidden, a memory flitted to the front of her consciousness. A memory of Ron and harry, her two old friends, saving her from the troll in her first year. She remembered their bravery and their struggles to save her life, the same life that had become so burdensome to them of late. Now, in their 6th year, harry and Ron had found more interesting entertainments, and they no longer spoke to her, except when they wanted to copy her work. Right now, as Hermione sat alone and dying in the grimy girls' bathroom, propped ungracefully against the cold tiles, they, her "friends" were off fucking their new girlfriends, neither was thinking of her.

Hermoines' trail of thought wandered then as her life slowly drained away onto the uncaring tiles under her. The puddle had reached her school robes and Hermione wondered what would happen to them. Would they be burned, would someone take the robes from her drained, cold body and destroy the last reminder of her, or would some caring soul clean them, scrub and scrub until the fresh red stain was gone and then wear the robes for the rest of their life. Hermione didn't care; she just wanted it over, wanted it to end all of it.

Then, as the final sticky lines of life drained away from her puffy, slit wrists, Hermione heard a door open somewhere in the distance. Everything was distant now. The foggy daze that had claimed her sight was so thick that she could barely make out the face of the girl who was standing over her. Then, Hermione heard the ear-piercing scream of Cho, Harry's girlfriend, as she cried out to Harry for help. That scream was the last thing Hermione ever heard.

They all stood sombrely at the church door as Harry, Ron, Neville and Seamus lifted the large wooden box that contained the husk of their once vivacious friend. Harry looked out over the small churchyard to a small sapling, bending and buckling in the biting cold wind.the day was ovecast and rain was threatening to engulf all the mourners that lined the church walkway. The outside of the church matched Harrys mood perfectly. Harry looked with wet eyes at Hermiones parents, clinging together, puffy eyed and disbelieving, huddled on the top step. 

"How could she think that she wasn't wanted," Harry thought bitterly, and looked away. 

Harry remembered the day they had found her dead, drained body in the girls' bathroom. He had heard Cho screaming for help and rushed in immediately, wand raised, ready to fight. There was nothing to fight for however, nothing that he could fix, and no one to be saved. Harry remembered how he stood before her lifeless shell, shocked, thinking nothing, idly listening to the wails and retches of Cho as she tried to comprehend what she had just found.

Harry just stood, staring into Hermiones dead, glassy eyes. He stared for so long. Harry then remembered Madame Pomfrey rushing in, he still didn't know who had called her. He could recall vividly how Pomfrey had shrieked once at the sight of Hermione sitting in a puddle of her own blood, glazed eyes staring into nothing, then had taken Hermione roughly by the shoulders and shook her while repeating her name over and over. Harry recalled how he had watched with a morbid fascination as Pomfreys violent movements of Hermiones body had disturbed the sticky blood surrounding her, so that it bean to creep, slowly, out toward Pomfreys knees. Harry shook the thoughts from his head and returned to surveying the blustery, cold landscape of the churchyard.

After Hermione had been placed in the ground and the people had left, Harry still stood at her gravesite with Ron, staring at the fresh mound of dirt that concealed their dead friend. Harry could hear Ron sniffing, but didn't look up. He held in his hand the last note Hermione had wrote to them, it was found on her bed the evening that she had… that they had found her. Harry and Ron still hadn't read it and Harry looked down at it, following the curve of Hermiones writing with his puffy eyes. Harry turned his eyes to Ron and saw that he too was surveying the letter. Ron looked at Harry and Harry nodded in unspoken agreement as he tore open the envelope and began to read aloud.

__

Dear harry and Ron,

Well, you don't have to worry about me anymore. You don't have to bother thinking of me and remembering me and… o wait, you never did that anyway. That's why were in this mess now. If you didn't want to be my friend anymore then you should've just said something. I'm sorry if my funeral cuts into your personal time with your girlfriends, and I'm sorry that now you'll have to do your own homework, I guess I should've hung around at least until the end of school so you wouldn't be inconvenienced, sorry.

I would like to thankyou for the time that we were friends, however, that time did mean something to me, even if it was only shortlived. I know that there will be people that will grieve for me, for a little while at least, but I also know that everyone will get over it, especially you two. I just have one thing to ask though. Please don't forget me, I couldn't bear to be forgotten. Just try every once in a while to spare a thought for me as I used to be, before I became so burdensome to you, please.

Yours sincerely,

Hermione

Harry finished the letter and looked up at Ron. Ron's face was deathly pale and he looked as though he was about to cry again. A thousand thoughts screamed through Harry's head,

"_It was all our fault"_

"It couldn't be our fault, we didn't do anything"

"Maybe that was the problem, we didn't do anything to help her"  
"how could she expect us to be with her twenty four seven! We all had different lives!"

"maybe we did ignore her"

"shes just being selfish!"

"well she wont be selfish anymore"

Harry fluctuated between feelings of anger, guilt, pity and disbelief. While he had been reading the letter the threatening rain had begun to fall. Harry took a final look at the letter from Hermione, damning both he and Ron with guilt, then, with one more look at Ron, he tore the letter into a million tiny pieces and thrust them violently into the air above him. Harry drew his cloak around him tightly and walked away from the grave of his old friend, leaving Ron, alone and guilt ridden, in the rain.


End file.
